Forward Progression

Sorry for the lackluster title of this post. 

Actually. No, I'm not. I'm unapologetically OWNING that boring title. And I'm going to make it perfectly awesome. 

Things are moving forward. I think. Could be wrong. Sometimes the wooosh of life swarming past you is really you missing reality. But I'm going to be optimistic and say we've got some forward progression.

Today I'm getting the LLC registered. The web domain will be purchased soon and the first seminar will be slated for August 10. I'm getting contacts in CA, CO, NY, and FL hacker spaces. I'm collecting people to interview for HackerSpace Rising. I'm contacting the media to spread the word. And I found an awesome band I want to help support and have play at our networking gigs. 

I'm going to be getting back with my contractors and consultants about contractual agreements. Late July I can see about starting the process to get IQCO classes started in local areas. 

And then we can grow. 

My contractors can get more work eventually once we start to expand. With few exceptions, I have more interested people than I have jobs for right now. Which is a blessing and a curse. I'm a sole proprietorship right now. An LLC. I don't have 9 co-founders. I am a single founder drudging through legal jargon to make it so my company can function. 

And I have a lot of home-chefs in the kitchen. Many hands can make light work but they can also cause huge amounts of confusion. I need to be better at delegating tasks, sure. Every boss needs to. They are the leaders of their organization. This is why I want to keep IQCO as a sole prop for a while. I only want my own neck on the line. I will pay my workers, but if things don't pan out I don't want ten people to have debt and a shot credit score. 

But, thinking positively. Things are trucking along. I have a niche market and an interested audience. This can work. 

Cheers, everybody. 

-IQCO MGMT

Hackerspaces For All Ages

So we are looking at starting our first hackerspace: IQ CO-Labs. It is looking like it will be a bit out of the way, possibly in Ft. Collins, CO, but that is for purposes of economical buildings and flexibility to grow our space.

There was something that caught my attention, and that is the fact that so much of the "hacker" culture is geared to 18-30 somethings. That is a tiny portion of the world. What if these hackerspaces were used to teach 11 year olds ras pi? Or how to wire Arduino sensors? We could sponsor a robotics team, we could get apprentices to pair with mentors that also worked in the shops. Fathers could come with their kids to teach them about woodworking, welding, or soldering.

And what about the 40-50 year olds that spent their lives as engineers, and just want to pass on a bit of wisdom to the next gen or to tinker? Perhaps this is a moment where author Richard Martin was right, "Here's to the next generation". Why not start innovation at a young age and cultivate it as they grow. Let them learn the skills that schools do not teach. Let's create lifelong hackers.

We can start with wunderkin hackerspaces, then they can be part of a teen hackerspace agreement, go to a hackerhouse as young adults and as professionals use a traditional hackerspace to create their projects. Then when they have families, they can take their kids to hackerspaces, and so on and so forth.

We can teach life skills, hacks, and tricks, projects, tech advice, life help, and anything else. Hmmm.

Get 'R Done (godMode)

Howdy, everyone. Alright I am just going to brain-spill on the page, and sift through all of it later. After a day of frenzied scrounging and identifying the best places to get this up and running, 300 evernote pins, and figuring out the best plan of attack, and getting the fearless commanders together (Godschmanders, for anyone who gets the joke), I figured now would be an opportune time to just get some thoughts organized in a somewhat coherent string of words. No promises though.

SO. IQ Co-Op is looking to bootstrap their way to awesomeness, not that it is a small task, but it is the prerogative nonetheless.  So on the first order of business.

The Game Plan:

We are going to start out with the most doable thing first, we are creating a switchboard to connect hosts with hackers. This can be for coworking space, coliving space, or looking to up hackerspace membership.

-Simultaneously-

We are going to also going to be starting the first of hopefully many hackerspaces across the globe. We will also have meeting rooms to connect hackerspaces with one another (thank you Skype and *even better* Google+ hangouts)


-Then-

We will start the true IQCO HackerHouses, with working, living, and maker spaces.*

* This will also be the time that we start marketing freelance hackers as a "think tank" service to other large companies.


Next Steps

So this week, we will be speaking with StartupDigest Colorado, looking at an office with Scrib in Boulder, CO, and incorporating.


Coming Soon: 

We will be discussing the nitty-gritty of our hacker space, getting it up and running, and throwing a wicked sweet rent party for entrepreneurs and hackers in the Boulder area.


I will keep you all updated.

Cheers,

IQ CO Mgmt

Our Goals.

Ideas are a powerful thing. They can start revolutions, or they can end wars. They can change a way of life. 

So what is your Idea? Is it to cure a disease or to change the way we understand what the brain is capable of? 

Artists : you can be the voice of change at war. Think of the artists in Dublin or England or Germany. Your can reach hundreds of thousands through your music. You can capture the hopes of civilians through photography. 

Engineers: you can build the machines that will save lives. You use technology to improve life for million of people. 

Writers: you give life to the thoughts and emotions of everyday people. You take the ordinary and make it familiar and take the familiar to make it extraordinary. 

Scientists: you answer the questions of life and give order to the universe. You make sense of the random happenstance that is life. 

Philosophers: you look for the questions of life. You understand people as well as civilization on a deeper level to try to understand it. 

Sociologists: you take the jumble of human synopsis and turn it in to a measurable hypothesis on future behaviors. 

Wouldn't it be something if the best minds from each of these fields worked together to form a community of innovators that were able to share knowledge and skills? This is the goal of    HackerHouse International. 

Welcome Home, Entrepreneurs

Well then, this is the beginning, I suppose.

Alright, maybe May was. Or maybe July will be....

Such is the life of the entrepreneur, the hacker, the pseudo-academic, and the innovator.We don't get an easy way out. We get the brunt of the bull and have to just go and run with it. Like, RUN!

I decided (after spending a single day in a hacker house in Palo Alto, CA) that the idea was brilliant. Smart, motivated entrepreneurs could live and work together. They could develop companies and build skills off of each other. They had office space and a separate living space. They had rooms that looked like there were seven mind maps shredded up, mixed together, and then transposed on whiteboards pinned up on the walls.

Think of a savant thrown in Trainspotting (minus hard drug abuse).

And out of this, my brainchild of HackerHouse International was born on the 2 hour flight back home.

So, this is what we are, and what we do:

• We are a co-working space for entrepreneurs and small businesses.You can find a host house to work in that you like the culture of, or that is the cheapest, closest, or whatever you are looking for. 
• We are also hackerspaces, where innovators can create their products, dreams, jewelry, 3D printed part, or painting. 
• We also provide contract work for freelance "hackers" to work for large companies. You can work collaboratively with other members on projects for other companies to help build your portfolio.
• Finally, we provide a NETWORK. You will soon find that over the earth, there are many innovative, brilliant, and creative people that you can learn a lot from. Each house is a part of the larger network, and members are encouraged to collaborate and use each others skills and networks to advance their own companies and projects. 

Co-working spaces are amazing. Look at Pivotdesk.com for an example. I aim to take this approach to a holistic living situation where you can work from the office, that is connected to the house, then go in to the "shed" and make your prototype to send photos of to another HHI member in Mumbai to create the finalized presentation for the meeting in Frankfurt on Monday. Come on, how cool would it be to build a start-up community from the ground up?

I contend, not only can it be done, but HHI will be on the leading edge of this. Who would like to join?

So, like I said, welcome, hackers one and all. Welcome to your new home; HackerHouse International, a subsidiary of the IQ Co-Op.

Ideas.

are powerful things.